The internet provides several sources of information which may be exploited. Internet news feeds and websites that allow users to interact with one another have exploded in popularity in the last few years. news feed channels such as CNN®, social networking websites sites such as Facebook® or LinkedIn®, and microblogging websites such as Twitter® enjoy widespread use. Millions of users post messages, images and videos on such websites on a daily, even hourly basis. Often, information gathered from these sources may refer to events taking place in real time. Such publicly accessible media may serve as a rich mine of information that may be used in different applications. Such information may be extracted in order to obtain an increased situational awareness about any event, such as, fire, earthquakes among others. This info may be useful for rescue teams and mission members. However, such information may be not accurate and exaggerated. Thus, rescue teams and mission members may not rely their decisions on this type of information.
Currently, filtering and validation software may be applied to data feeds; this may reduce “noise” and may validate information. However, current systems and methods do not provide seamless processing and live display of information. In addition, information has to be organized and summarized in order to be suitable for first responders, mission members or anyone needing real-time situational awareness. This may consume time that is required for mission planning and response.
Thus there is a need for a system and method capable of performing detection, extraction and validation of events found in one or more data sources, and effectively associate the extracted events with independent entities. Such a system or method may be able to seamlessly summarize and prioritize events based on the information received and may also provide live information displays of information.